Work by Seya Parboosingh (left) and John (right) 'Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Beau-ootiful Soo-oop!
Beau-ootiful Soo-oop!
Soo-oop of the e-e-evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!'
That was just one of the nonsense songs daddy would sing to us in the evening to while the time away; but oftentimes, during the day, if he was at home and in Trinidad, he would regale us with those lyrics as well. The song, of course, is from Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland, but I would be seven or eight years old before I discovered that by reading the book myself, and I was a teenager before discovering, to my chagrin and his amusement, the words were based on an old song titled 'Beautiful Dreamer'.
Before all of that, of course, I had heard the song, I'm sure over a hundred times. The thing about this is that Daddy used to sing the lines just as they are reproduced here, which is just as they appeared in the story. And my brothers and I loved it, and would beg him over and over to sing these words for us. I can appreciate now how extra lucky we were. I suppose you could say it made me a real bookworm. I can remember days upon days curled up by the old bookshelf with the shortwave radio on top, with one of the first books he encouraged me to read, namely, an already old copy of Edward Lear's Nonsense Rhymes. I was fascinated by the odd drawings which illustrated lines such as:
There was an old man with a beard,Who said, 'It is just as I feared!
Two owls and a hen, Four larks and a wren, Have all built their nests in my beard.'
And at night he would scare us by reciting:
Far and few, far and few, are the lands where the Jumblies live; their heads are green, and their hands are blue, and they went to sea in a Sieve.
That would be the signal to run and get the book and he would read the whole of Lear's Jumblies for us.
In those days of my childhood, Daddy was working with the Jamaica Gleaner's Federal Bureau. He couldn't take us with him on his travels, but he sure brought Jamaica home to us with art, literature and culinary things. He also brought home many Jamaican journalists, fellows like Frank Hill and Theodore Sealy, who would discuss late into the night, and Daddy would be nodding on the couch, and so it would be talk, sleep, talk. There were the aromas of Tia Maria and Blue Mountain coffee. I used to try to imagine what a blue mountain looked like. There was a delicate replica of a raft that we were forbidden to play with; of course we did, and that mashed up pretty early.
But - and think but, really, in all caps with exclamation points - we still have a painting titled 'Seya' by the Jamaican artist Karl Parboosingh. Seya was placed in the corridor of our small home. I feared this painting. A huge face painted in red, framed with black hair and with stern features and piercing eyes that seemed to follow you down the corridor and across the living room and into the kitchen, and if you stood at a certain window and looked in, Seya was there, sternly staring back. She saw every clandestine thing. I don't think I can convey here how proud Daddy was of that painting, and of his friendship with the artist himself. 'Uncle Parboo' came to dinner one night in the early '70s about a year or two before he died. I remember he was amazed that Daddy still had Seya. Of course, I now know that Parboosingh ranks high among the don dadas of the Jamaican Expressionists, and Seya, his wife, is also an artist.
Over the years, Daddy added to his art collection, but I have to say that if I have any appreciation for art at all - and there are one or two valued opinions which say that I do - it started with 'Seya'.
It was on one of those trips that he brought back Jamaican scholar Philip Sherlock's Three-Finger Jack's Treasure, and the Anansi Stories retold by him. Jack was for my brother, Tony, and Anansi for the family. The pleasure I got from reading Three-Finger Jack's Treasure! That book, now out of print, I think, was so rich with Jamaican folklore, language and locations, it made me know Jamaica almost like a native. I used to long to be John and his sister Hilary (the protagonists of the novel), going to places like the market in Montego Bay, sitting under a silk-cotton tree with Uncle Eby listening to scary stories while he puffed on his pipe in the twilight, so that when I went to Mona decades later, and from there visited Accompong, the Maroon country of Three-Finger Jack, it was the headiest sensation.
Then on days when I was fed up of Jack, or when my older brother, having cruelly (I thought) said, 'Give me my book!' I could always curl up with the tales of Anansi the man-spider, as retold by Sherlock. Anansi was just like the smally furry grey spider that lived under the ledge of the bannister in the porch which was where I would sit and read about Tiger, Tortoise, Mr Snake, Mr. Alligator and the rest.
Those tales were so vivid to me they were real. There've been many books since then, but I still have these. The covers are falling off, and, Daddy, I will never throw those books away.
- Deborah John
Six Months Later
Six months have gone
and I'm not any better.
The shadow of your passing
hangs in the air, a cloud
that will not move or rain.
My eyes are dry.
I've always been stubborn;
one day I will accept that things are
the way they are, and you are not here.
Until then, I refuse
to surrender to memory.
- Andrew Stone
The Other Woman
You are not mine.
Not for us the kissing
of warm crumbs
from each others' mouths
after a snack in the park.
We dare not smile
our love when others are near,
yet our eyes send frantic messages.
The love lines cross,
lock, threaten to ignite.
- Kimmisha Thomas
